In Summary

Kenya and Djibouti are now connected through the submarine cable Djibouti Africa Regional Express 1 (Dare1). The cable landed in Mombasa this week and is expected to boost connectivity in the Horn of Africa.

Installation of the more than 5,000-kilometer-long cable is complete and now awaits official launching and pre-test in the next few months.

The submarine cable system connects Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya with an option of extending to Tanzania.

The 30 Terabit per second Dare1 is owned by a consortium of East African telecom operators who include Djibouti Telecom, Somtel, Telkom Kenya and SubCom is estimated to cost $86 million and will have a capacity per wavelength of 100Gbps. The giant telcos have been in constant consultation over the last couple of years configuring and designing the cable routes.

Djibouti Telecom's director-general, Mohamed Assoweh Bouh in a statement during the launch of the project in Djibouti in January this year said the cable will be in operationalisation later in June, after capacity development and skill transfer.

The project which started at La Siesta Beach, Djibouti, in January has landing stations in Djibouti City (Djibouti), Bosaso (Puntland), Mogadishu (Somalia), and Mombasa (Kenya) in the first phase, with Tanzania (Dar es Salaam) having an option to connect to the cable.